Jones, whose career began back in the rockabilly era and whose hard-living ways were almost as legendary as his incomparable singing, has died at 81.

FILE - In this Jan. 10, 2007 file photo, George Jones is shown in Nashville, Tenn. Jones, the peerless, hard-living country singer who recorded dozens of hits about good times and regrets and peaked with the heartbreaking classic "He Stopped Loving Her Today," has died. He was 81. Jones died Friday, April 26, 2013 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville after being hospitalized with fever and irregular blood pressure, according to his publicist Kirt Webster. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey
— AP

FILE - In this Jan. 10, 2007 file photo, George Jones is shown in Nashville, Tenn. Jones, the peerless, hard-living country singer who recorded dozens of hits about good times and regrets and peaked with the heartbreaking classic "He Stopped Loving Her Today," has died. He was 81. Jones died Friday, April 26, 2013 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville after being hospitalized with fever and irregular blood pressure, according to his publicist Kirt Webster. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey
/ AP

Rock guitar greats Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones were also admirers of Jones, and both recorded with him, as did Ray Charles, Emmylou Harris and a host of others. In 1990, top San Diego roots-rock band the Beat Farmers included a suitably raucous version of the early Jones' classic "Revenooer Man" on its album "Loud and Plowed and...Live!"

The esteem other artists held for him was perhaps best captured by the lyrics to "It's Alright" by fellow county-music giant Jennings, which contains the couplet: If we all sang like we wanted to, we'd all sound like George Jones!

A native of Saratoga, Texas, Jones sang for tips on the streets of Beaumont as a teenager before enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps. He launched his recording career in 1955 and never looked back. He was married four times, including once to fellow country-music legend Tammy Wynette, with whom he recorded such memorable songs in the 1970s as "Near You," "Golden Ring" and "We’re Gonna Hold On."

After their 1976 divorce, Jones had a rocky number of years. In 1980 he recorded "He Stopped Loving Her Today," an exquisite ballad that revived his moribund career. It earned him a Grammy Award for Best Male Vocal Country Performance.

For decades, Jones was nearly as noted for his hard-living ways -- especially when it came to drinking and using cocaine -- as he was for his wonderfully expressive music. He missed so many concert appearances that he earned the nickname "no-show Jones." He was more fondly known by fans as "Possum." James Taylor wrote the song "Bartender's Blues" for Jones and they recorded it together.

His chart-topping 1959 hit, "White Lightning," required more than 80 vocal takes by Jones, who was too inebriated to sing more than a few words at a time. He once drove his lawnmower to a liquor store, after his second wife, Shirley Corley, had hidden all the car keys in a futile effort to get him to stop drinking. And, in an especially memorable incident, he decided to make his tour bus more airy by firing off a round of bullets from his pistol into the floor of the bus.

In 1999, Jones spent weeks in a hospital after a serious, alcohol-induced car accident. It was surely not coincidental that one of his hits was entitled "If Drinking Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)."

In his 1996 autobiography, the then-optimistically titled "I Lived to Tell It All," Jones offered a no-holds-barred look at his tumultuous life. For the caption to one especially haggard-looking photo of himself, he wrote: "I'm at the point of exhaustion during an alcohol and cocaine binge in 1977."

In the aftermath of his near-fatal 1999 car accident, Jones cleaned up. He stopped drinking, stopped taking drugs and even stopped smoking.

Speaking to U-T San Diego in 2000, Jones said: "I definitely have quit drinking. I definitely will never do that again. I'm a little closer to the good Lord. And I quit smoking. And I feel so much better. For the first time in my life, I really feel good. "And if I had known this years ago that I'd have felt this good, I would've taken better care of myself. You know how that goes."